Summer Flowers - summer sketches

Exploration in small bites

Greetings on a glorious (but grilling) day. My kitchen-porch sunflowers are in full bloom. Each morning sunlight streams through their petals. The leaves look like green elephant ears. Bees circle and zip, measuring the distance and potential of each bloom. Meanwhile, at ground level, four-footed marauders make off each night with ripening fruit, including sunflower blossoms. So my second floor garden, such as it is, is a gift and a victory.

The heat drives me a little crazy. To make art I must work small, with portable supplies, and stay somewhere cool. Fortunately this month I stumbled on Larry Moore’s sketchbook thumbnail videos. They inspired me to focus on loose, layered sketches, embracing the possibility that they may lead to larger work. Here are some results so far.  I even snuck in some portraits during Art Together, my free art session with friends.

My small bird/collage project continues into August. Hope you can cope with the hot weather. Suggestions always welcome.

Keep Reaching Out

Science, art, and kindness will get us through

These past few weeks, COVID-19’s shadow again knocked me off balance. Too much news. Too many worries.

I painted in tiny bursts, but working together with friends on Sundays was the life raft, the one reliable focus. The rest of the time I felt scattered by my daughter’s return with long-haul symptoms. Airlines, doctors, insurance, research, interspersed with reading (The Broken Earth, NK Jeminsin) and lots of jigsaw puzzles.

Finally last week a class assignment got my attention. The lecture was on geometry in abstract art. The challenge: look at an artist’s work, then try your own subject in their style. This resonated: I have been wrestling for sometime with the beauty of trees, and this seemed like a new path in. Here are the results. So far. I drifted from the brief, but still covered new ground. Green shade and shafts of light outside my city window.

The third attempt came after the group crit. Seeing other people’s solutions - some so far more advanced than mine - was a gift. Such a different feeling, when you let go of image, and instead mass blocks of color. I don’t know where this is taking me. The point is to stretch. You need to stretch, to extend your reach. It feels good.

“The very impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water.” - Annie Dillard

Another good feeling this week: receiving generosity. Artist Susan Gaylord saw my frustration on-line about my daughter’s condition. She wrote to me: “I’d like to do something.” Out of the blue. She created an for my girl an original calligraphy, using a quote we picked out. What a gift, the more so for being unexpected.

I have been having fun this morning, setting the words to different backgrounds - galaxies, flowers, art. But maybe the work stands best on it’s own:

Susan Gaylord, July 2020

What is art for you in these changed and changing times?

Into Summer

community for comfort

The summer is here full force. Clothing is light; daylight hours long. I am learning to work slowly, to move gently in the heat.

I am also, finally, making masks for myself and my family.

Don't know about you but this past week I have been almost useless. The US surge in virus brought back the “can’t look away” feeling of a slow-motion car crash. I hovered on news outlets. I hungered for the unavailable resolution, the way I used to shake the Magic 8 ball as a kid, when I wanted a different answer to appear.

Now I am inching forward again. Small goals. Small steps. “Little and often makes much. “ I need that truth right now.

Music helps. Quiet music like cool water soothes and liberates. Rhythm, melody, carry me back from the edge.

Do you have a playlist you’d recommend? Let me know, please.

The other gift is regular company. My group, Art Together, provides focus and welcome company. I started the group when the lockdown started. It just seemed like art time together was a gift i could give. In fact, it’s a gift for me too. Even when I come to a session unfocused, some alchemy happens. Work happens. Worries recede. Hands create.

Art Together meets Sundays 3-5. It’s drop-in and free.

Here’s some of the work folks have done in our hours together. Really I should rename the group “Any Art On-line.” Draw, cut, glue, print, stitch, paint. Just come. Relax. Make art.

Art. A port in the storm. A boat to travel on, together.

“My faith in the world of art is intense but not irrational or naïve. Art invites us to take the journey beyond price, beyond costs into bearing witness to the world as it is and as it should be. Art invites us to know beauty and to solicit it from even the most tragic of circumstances.     - ”

— Toni Morrison

Step Out

Share what you have

Let your light shine

We ease out of May and lock-down, into summer and….. what? This morning: Violence. Masks. Division. Anger. It is easier to read about history than live through it.

Here we are.

Where does art fit in? Perhaps to you, now, art-making feels like an indulgence. Listen. Art is essential. It is feeling and perception made visible. Artists hear the world. Art does not just activate your time (where would we be now without our books and movies?) It expresses the time we are in. When historians look back, one definition of an era is the art. Speak, now.

We are right to make art, however and whenever we can. Maybe we won’t all change the world like Larry Kramer. Each of us has a voice, though. Use it. Make a mark. Make your mark. Build where you are. Share what you have.

For me, the over-load of news these past weeks and hours makes art/work sporadic. The focus comes in bursts. That’s ok. For brief moments I focus. Art grounds me in the real, the act itself. Between sessions I drift - on the internet, around the house. But then I return to my art table . The paints are waiting. A mark, another, and the ideas begin to flow.

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any small spot, as long as it’s yours

An aside: I hope you have an art table that calls you.

No? Take an afternoon and make one. Now. Just a corner at least. One that belongs just to you. A place where your tools can sit out. Where you can think.

An artist needs a place to settle into the work. A work table is where your work waits for you.

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Maybe this example helps. These sketches below are not final studies. I’m not even focusing on the figure now. But for three short hours I joined Catherine Kehoe’s on-line figure class. We did three sets of exercises - blind contour, "body bag,” and gesture. An intense, meditative afternoon. Then I drew last two studies, sketchbook explorations of trees. The life that surges up through trees feels important to me. Always has. I don’t know why. Something now about their growth, literally larger than ours -overarching, essential, unseen - feels important to express, especially now.

What is important to you? What feeling urges inside you? Experiment. Explore. Art-making offers infinite directions. Choose one. Take a step. (You can change. That’s ok.) Your art matters. Make art now.

Make art, because this is your time. Your response to it matters.

“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. ”

— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Wander Fearlessly

Try.

See what happens.

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“Go ahead. Wander fearlessly down the corridors of knowledge.” - Esther Barazzone, Kirkland College

The blank page is scary. To start, you must make a mark, then another. That means you step onto a path, where all is possible but you must choose, again and again, with no guarantee. Like walking in the woods - is it a path? A dead-end? Are you lost or moving forward?

We make art because we long to. It’s elements call us: color, line, light, the very stuff of perception. We long to make something deep inside visible. Art is passion, risky and challenging, but at its best a source of joy.

So if you make art, you are already brave. Look at your tools. What’s calling you today? Pick up a tool and make a mark. Just one. Defy that blank page. Now, make another. Play with shape. Add color. Before you start to worry, get another piece of paper and start again. Start over and over. When the playful energy subsides, step back, get a cup of tea, and look. What happened? Which calls to you? Start there, and, thinking a little more, work back in.

Art-making is courage. But the truth is, there are no rules. You are free. It’s just a piece of paper. Keep trying, and let the surprises come.

Practice. Try. Look. Listen. Repeat.

• You need to explore, so carry your best gear with you.

• Stop and listen to what’s happening on the page. ]

• Work on more than one piece at once.

• Take pictures along the way. It’s a gift to be able to see where a piece came from and the stages it went through.

• Stop before you are done. Stop when you are only 75% done. Slow down the closer you are to finished.

• Remember that contrast is the most important way to get the viewer’s attention. Create from the heart. Use a limited palette.

• Learn from folks who are ahead of you on the trail.

• It’s okay to do “too much” - that’s one way you’ll learn what “just right” looks like.

These lessons swirl in my head while I work. Pushing the boundaries. I watch what happens. Ask, what if?

Making art is taking chances. Keep going. Let go. Throw and see where the toss lands.